


Harbor in the Storm

by Semira



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Caring Dean Winchester, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Repressed Winchesters, Episode: s12e20 Twigs and Twine and Tasha Banes, Gen, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, Malnutrition, POV Sam Winchester, Sam Winchester-centric, Worried Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 14:37:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10833300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Semira/pseuds/Semira
Summary: Sam doesn't bother explaining, just tips his chin to let Dean see the livid bruising where the witch's doll strangled him.Dean hisses. "Jesus, Sam." Callused fingertips run down his neck, lingering over the mottled marks and exerting just the tiniest, fluttering bit of pressure before returning to the wheel. When Sam glances over, his brother is staring at the road again, too intent to be casual. "I guess I know why you didn't mention it, but... man, you gotta let me know if you're really hurting. There's a line when it comes to this kind of thing. A little sore throat is on thesure, okayside of the line, and my-throat-is-swelling-closed-'cause-I-got-freakin'-strangled-nearly-to-death is on thetell me right the hell awayside."In other words...Placed after the end of 12.20, when Sam doesn't wake up to Dean frantically calling his name. Sam isn't okay, Dean isn't okay, and there's a laundry list a mile long of reasons why. Sam talks. Dean listens. Actual meaningful conversation happens. Sam might sleep in Dean's bed. There was too much pain and too little casual affection and care this episode, honestly.Needless to say, spoilers abound. Proceed with caution.





	Harbor in the Storm

_Sam..._ _Sam._

"Sam!" The ragged voice sifts into Sam's awareness at about the same time he feels his head thumping against something cold and solid.

Awareness, unwelcome, settles around him. There’s pressure on his shoulder: Dean must have shaken him. The grit in Sam’s eyes and the clawing, bone-deep exhaustion tells him he must have fallen asleep against the window without meaning to. The worried rasp of Dean's voice indicates that he's called Sam's name more than a few times.

"…Dean? What?" His brother's name comes out mangled, barely voiced. That certainly can’t be helping Dean’s rising worry. He turns his head carefully to look at Dean.

Sure enough, Dean's doing that thing where he's sparing split-second glances at the road while dedicating way too much time to looking at Sam. It's a wonder the Impala hasn't been totaled more times than it already has. Forget demons in eighteen-wheelers and Nachzehrers and other supernatural phenomena—sheer recklessness should have totaled her ten times over by now.

"Sam?" Dean's voice goes low, eyes narrowed. It looks like anger. Sam translates it to concern.

"'M'fine. Got—" _God, it hurts._ Getting nearly-strangled is never a walk in the park. Feels like he's gargling thumbtacks. Sounds like it, too. "—Got roughed up by one of the witch's zombies." He doesn't explain any more, just tips his chin to let Dean see the livid bruising.

Dean hisses. " _Jesus_ , Sam." Callused fingertips run down his neck, lingering over the mottled marks and exerting just the tiniest, fluttering bit of pressure before returning to the wheel. When Sam darts a glance over, his brother is staring at the road again, too intent to be casual. "I guess I know _why_ you didn't mention it, but... man, you gotta let me know if you're really hurting. There's a line when it comes to this kind of thing. A little sore throat is on the _sure, okay_ side of the line, and my-throat-is-swelling-closed-'cause-I-got-freakin'-strangled-nearly-to-death is on the _tell me right the fuck away_ side."

"I really am fine. I'd know if the swelling was..." he swallows, wincing at the pain and difficulty of it, "...if it was dangerous. Just sleepy. 'S'been a long…" Week. Month. Year. _Life_.

Silence falls. They both know too much about the kind of loss Max experienced tonight. Sam knows the bruises on his neck probably remind Dean of the marks Corbin left when he strangled Sam in that cabin in the woods.

Sam still sometimes feels the stab of hollow, ringing grief from when he saw the sun return and believed that Dean died to make it happen.

Alicia’s blood has crusted under his fingernails and darkened the winter-roughened dry skin of his knuckles. It’s on his clothes, too. The loss isn’t his, not really, but it echoes too many other losses. Alicia was kind, generous, _good_.

Sometimes hunting just feels like a rumination on the art of goodbyes. In any case, Sam has gotten damn good at them. Sometimes it’s all he can do not to call all the numbers in his phone until he hears a _hello_ on the other end.

Mary. Eileen. Magda. Jody. He needs to know they’re safe and alive. The wins they’ve had seem so pale and fragile in the face of their losses.

Lost in thought, Sam flinches when Dean speaks again.

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

Sam frowns. The unfiltered answer, of course, is no. The answer to the question Dean is asking, however, is yes. Nothing got cracked or broken tonight. Sam isn’t going to keel over from strangulation-related injuries. “Just bruises, bit of soreness,” Sam whispers.

Dean nods. “You said you were tired.”

Trust Dean to settle on the critical bit. Dean, ever the intuitive interrogator.

Sam pauses for too long before answering.

Dean darts a glance over at him, lips thinning. “You’ve been pulling all-nighters on research a lot lately.”

 _Damn it._ “Yeah.”

“Even when you maybe don’t need to. Like with that whole Kelly’s creepy baby’s birthday thing you Beautiful-Minded all over the map table.”

Sam nods, winces.

“How much you been sleepin’, Sam?”

It would be entirely honest to admit that he doesn’t really know. He catches naps, sometimes, without meaning to. It’s not that he hates the idea of sleep. He craves it. But Lucifer forced himself on a woman under the guise of her lover and now she’s going to have a baby ( _special_ , special like Sam was), and Sam still can’t forget the corpses Lucifer left in his wake when he was on Earth. An angel of his power could have left much greater destruction, of course. Sam knows it only too well.

It’s the _whimsy_ of it that keeps Sam from sleeping and wakes him in blind, burning terror. Lucifer left bodies behind him like a child sheds a costume, as if human lives were something he could use up and discard. Sam and Dean spend most of their time in the bunker nowadays, and Lucifer was _there_. He locked himself in Sam’s room. Not even his sanctuary is safe, no matter how much he cleans and organizes and washes everything he can pull from the walls.

Heaven is empty of its god, and Lucifer walked the earth unfettered. It’s a wonder Sam's slept at all, really.

He closes his eyes, presses his cheek against the chill of the window, and breathes.

Dean’s voice softens. “Sam? C’mon, man.”

Sam shakes his head. “Not much. Dunno.”

“Are we talking hell-wall-in-your-head-came-crumbling-down levels of not sleeping, or—” Dean stops himself, swallows whatever he was going so say next, then whispers, “Fuck.” Then, “ _Lucifer_.”

Sam shrugs, helpless. Of course Lucifer.

“And those pansy-ass Brits, am I right?” Dean laughs.

Sam shrugs, tries on a smile.

From Dean’s sympathetic grimace, he assumes he doesn’t pull it off.

“So….”

“I’m managing it, Dean.”

A soft chuckle. “Y’know, Sam, I have absolutely no doubt that you are, but you’ve _managed_ a whole shit-ton of things that would have killed you, so forgive me if I’m still not appeased. What can—how can we fix this?”

“I don’t know. He’s just… everywhere. And with Kelly, with Cas, it’s not like we can take a break from any of it. It’s just… always there.”

“Well, we might get a bit of a break from it. Mom called. Sounds like something’s up. We won’t be any use to anyone this late, so we’ll head back, clean up, and figure things out from there. You think you can sleep in here for a while?”

It’s one of the few places Sam _can_ sleep. It’s muscle-memory after so long. He’s fallen asleep in the Impala for decades and woken unharmed. Not even Lucifer can override that.

Sam just nods.

Dean relaxes, smiles, and searches for a soft rock station. It always knocks Sam right out.

He drifts into dreamless sleep to the sound of quiet, off-key humming.

 

-oOo-

 

Sam is on his feet but not entirely awake on the way into the bunker. He doesn’t remember getting out of the car, but he has the impression of darkness and the smell of rain.

He’s all the way to what he can only guess is his bedroom door with Dean herding him by one elbow when he finally blinks into semi-alertness. “…Mm?”

“Was wondering when you’d join me in the land of the verbal. Go on in. Get some more sleep.”

Sam can’t remember if he mentioned anything about how hard it is to sleep in his room nowadays. “Dean…”

“Just go in and try. I’m’nna rustle up some grub. How old is that pancake mix with the aluminum foil over the top?”

“I’m not really hungry,” Sam murmurs.

Dean is silent long enough that Sam has to turn and look. He’s met with a withering raised eyebrow and a frown.  

“See,” Dean finally says. “I had a lot of time to think on the way back, and I can’t remember more than a handful of times—like actually less than five—that you’ve actually finished something you started, if you ordered something at all. Like, even that egg-white-abomination—“

“ _You_ ate the whole thing.”

“Food is food is food, Sam! Not the point. I just realized that was one of the first times I’ve seen you actually order something without someone reminding you to, and—anyway. Pancakes? You’re frickin’ huge, man. You’ve gotta eat more. I’m worried about you.”

Headshot. Sam flinches. “Sorry.”

“Nah, man, don’t be sorry. Just… take care of yourself.”

“I eat.”

“What, exactly?”

“Coffee. And… bagels.” He clears his throat. The pain there is duller now, but his voice still sounds raspy. “I finished that pack on top of the fridge.”

The critical eyebrow rises ever higher. “Not impressive considering the time frame we’re dealing with, but ‘A’ for effort. Sam, are you… okay?”

Sam shrugs. “Just busy. Tired. You know how it gets.”

“Look, we might have that crappy unsweetened applesauce you got like a month ago? I’m sure there’s something green on one of the shelves.” Dean gestures to the door. “Go on. Settle in. I’ll drag out whatever’s still okay and throw it on a plate if you’ll eat what you can. Deal?”

Sam nods and opens the door, stopping dead half a step inside. The walls are adorned with weapons and little else, and the bed is meticulously made and straightened. He half-turns. This isn't his room. It's Dean's room. “Uh…?”

Dean shrugs. “Figured a change of pace might do you some good. Maybe the thing you need is memory foam, because _man_ ,” he makes an obscene noise and grins, and Sam just rolls his eyes because he knows Dean does it to distract from the sentimentality of his offer. “That stuff is great. Almost better than sex. You’ll sleep like a baby.”

Sam steps inside, offering Dean a wan smile that’s nonetheless genuine. Dean returns it, a warm quirk of his lips, and shrugs.

Sam tips into the bed and pulls the covers up. Dean uses a sheet and everything, and he washes his bedding religiously once every two weeks. (“Fabric softener, Sam. It’s what separates us from the animals.”) His room is as carefully and fastidiously maintained as his weapons. Bad things have happened in every corner of this bunker, but there’s something about the predictable orderliness of Dean’s space that allows Sam to relax. He’s halfway to sleep when he feels fingers on the back of his neck, lifting his head.

“Painkillers,” Dean mutters. “Should help with the swelling, too. Take these things and I’ll let you rest, okay? I’ll get you up in a few hours, and we can figure out what’s up with Mom.”

Halfway gone, Sam rolls in the direction of Dean’s voice and sits up, knocking back the pills without opening his eyes. He almost thinks he lets his control on his tongue slip, almost thinks he whispers, “Stay.” But he’s already most of the way into a cozy dream; he won’t remember saying it when he wakes up.

He won’t remember Dean ruffling Sam’s hair and pulling up a chair beside him. Dean won’t make any grand promises that they’ll fix things. They don’t always, and after so long, those promises ring false. Instead, Dean says, “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Sam slips the rest of the way into sleep to the sound of Dean’s fingers skimming over the keyboard of his laptop.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, everything comes back to Lucifer. If the show won't acknowledge how creepy and difficult it must be for Sam to realize that his torturer is walking the earth unfettered, I'll write about it until I'm blue in the metaphorical face. Also, ouch. This season hasn't been nice to Sam. He just needs some insomnia, undernourishment, and grief to loosen his tongue and let him share a few of those burdens. (Right? Right.) I've posted a lot of fix-its and ficlets over on [Tumblr](http://semirahrose.tumblr.com/tagged/tumblr-fic) that I don't end up posting over here, in case anyone is interested in reading or wailing with me about the agony this show puts us through and the sheer impossibility of the fact that _I keep coming back for more._


End file.
